Characters hiding under our noses...

This happens to me all the time. My most recent freak out was when someone pointed out that Ben Linus’s dad on LOST was actually Uncle Rico from Napoleon Dynamite.

Are you sure it was Jerry Orbach? I believe S. Epatha Merkerson played a crime victim a couple of seasons before she became Lt. Van Buren.

ETA: Nevermind, I googled it and he did indeed play a sleazy defense attorney in early L&O. I guess they like to try people out.

Actually, the Becky role went back and forth twice, with Goranson and Chalke sharing the role in the 8th season, before Goranson left for good.

Via IMDb:

And that crazy guy in the Priceline.COM commercials used to play Capt. Kirk on Star Trek.

I’ve never seen Lost and didn’t care for Napoleon Dynamite, but when you said Uncle Rico, I knew you were talking about Jon Gries. To me, he’ll always be the brilliant eccentric Lazlo Hollyfeld in Real Genius. In fact, that’s mine, realizing that the uncle in Napoleon Dynamite was Lazlo.

“Did you wanna borrow my pajamas?”

Two other examples of this: Lionel Jefferson was played by Mike Evans on All In The Family and the initial season of The Jeffersons. Mike Evans left the series and Lionel was played by Damon Evans (no relation) for three seasons. Then Mike Evans took the role back over in the fourth through tenth seasons.

Barbara Bel Geddes played Ellie Ewing on Dallas the first five seasons. Donna Reed played Ellie in the sixth season. Then Bel Geddes came back and played the part for seasons seven through twelve.

These two are kind of similar:

Katherine Heigl - threw me for a loop when I realized she had played Segal’s daughter in Under Siege 2 many years before.

Eliza Dushku - I’d seen her in *Bring It On *and BtVS long before I realized she was Schwarzenegger’s daughter from True Lies.

[jaw drop] I have to see this again, and soon.[/jaw drop]

He’s not so crazy. I read that that gig has earned him $600M. He was savvy enough to negotiate his salary in shares, rather than dollars.

The stock has gone from $1.80 to somewhere in the $300’s.

Or so I’ve read.

Wow. I never heard this. Got a cite?

Jesse L. Martin (aka Det. Ed Green) also played a drug dealer named Mouse on a long ago episode of Law & Order. I’ve never seen it, I only know this because he mentioned it once in an interview.

Holy Jesus crap, you’re right! She still has some baby fat too. Take a look peeps:

Eliza grows up on the big screen

Oh yeah, there’s apparently an episode of Miami Vice where a teenaged Julia Roberts shows up as a hooker or something.

HOLY SHIT.

I just learned that Andy Serkis of Gollum fame was Mr Alley, Tesla’s assistant, in one of my favorite films of all time, The Prestige.

I saw that ep late one night during a bout with insomnia, watching MV on the Sleuth channel. I couldn’t believe it until I checked IMDb.

Diane Neal was in an episode of SVU before being cast as ADA Casey Novak; she played one of a trio of women who raped a male stripper at a party.

My biggest flashback forehead-slapper was seeing Nigel Hawthorne in Firefox. I was a big fan of Yes, Minister, where Hawthorne played one of the co-leads. I’d seen Firefox when it came out, but didn’t recognize him until seeing it again years later. It’s not a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo, either; he plays one of the scientists at the Russian air base who helps Clint Eastwood steal a MiG fighter.

I must have watched **Animal House **a dozen times. The last one I realized suddenly: “Holy crap, that’s Mozart!”

I watched Lost and Ugly Betty, both in their entirety, and it never dawned on me that Widmore and Mr. Meade were the same guy until a few weeks ago. It’s not even as if they were very different characters.

I remember that too from a bout with insomnia. I remember she had really thick eyebrows. Actually Miami Vice re-runs are awesome for seeing people before they were famous.

A weird recognition for me was one day thinking back on sci-fi/fantasy flicks I liked as a kid, and realizing the one older lawyer guy John Cage from Ally McBeal, the one the called The Biscuit, was the lead character in the movie Dragonslayer.

He was also Janosz (the weird little that kept talking to the painting of Vigo) in Ghostbusters II

I am literally watching Titus in the other half of my browser window. I did not know this. You have blown my mind.

For me, it wasn’t until the last year or so that I realized the Captain from Monk was Jame “Buffalo Bill” Gumb.

Here’s one that I’m sure everyone knows but blew my mind when I found out years ago…

The older transsexual drag performer in Priscilla, Queen of the Desert is Terrence Stamp, aka General Zod from the Christopher Reeve Superman movies!

“Kneel before Bernadette!”

In the “Our Gang” short “Good Bad Boys,” *Hugh Beaumont has a brief appearance as a judge’s assistant. I’ve seen that short many times and never noticed him. And once I knew, I still never would have recognized him.